


Parietal Art

by Tipsy_Kitty



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M, POV Multiple, Pining, Post-Civil War (Marvel), Pre-War, Reunions, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-21 18:34:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11363217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tipsy_Kitty/pseuds/Tipsy_Kitty
Summary: Steve's history was written on his skin.





	Parietal Art

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by SirenMYT's lovely art; thank you for being so patient with me!
> 
> Thanks so much to firesign10 and heeroluva for the beta reads. As usual, I kept fiddling with this fic right up to posting, so all mistakes are my own.

**1939**

Essie stepped out the side door of the stifling barbershop and into the muggy August evening. The streets smelled of garbage and piss, and by the time she closed up tonight the stink of vomit would be in the air as well. At least outside there was a slight breeze to cool the sweat from her body. Mickey’s little metal fan had stopped working some weeks back, and he hadn't gotten around to fixing it yet. She could only accomplish so much with a handheld paper fan, especially as she drew closer to ‘a certain age,’ as her ma’s friends would have delicately put it.

She walked up the alley and onto the sidewalk, pulling a Lucky Strike from the slightly damp pack tucked into her bra. This weren’t the kind of neighborhood where a gentleman lights a lady's smoke for her, and Essie ain't much of a lady anyways. She pulled out a box of matches and struck one against the bricks as she leaned against the window of the shop.

Mickey had seemed pretty skeptical about renting space to a tattooist, never mind a girl, but he could use the extra dough--everyone could, these days--and had grudgingly rented the back of the shop out to her. After years spent under the needle, her skin was decorated with tattoos that twined up her calves and down her arms. She'd even spent time on the circuit in the Ten-in-Ones, smiling coyly as marks yelled questions from the crowd about how much of her skin was marked up. (All of it from the neck down, not that she'd let those jokers get more than a peek of her knees.)

She eyed the store window critically, the MALLOY'S SHAVE & HAIRCUT paint scratched and peeling in places, already imagining how it would look one day filled with photos and illustrations of her work. But she hadn't been operating her own needle for very long; time for that later.

She plucked a stray piece of tobacco off her tongue, flicked it to the ground, and watched the crowds of sailors heading into the bars and the picture houses. From the supper club two doors down, the strains of “The Man I Love’’ drifted out an open window, and Essie found herself humming along.

Down the block, she spotted two kids, maybe not yet 20, walking so close they were practically touching. They were both skinny as twigs, the short one wearing an expression of determination, the taller one a bit easier going, but they were definitely arguing.

“This has to be the dumbest thing you’ve ever done,” said the taller one, once she could hear them.

“Not as dumb as the time you cut your own hair with your ma’s sewing shears. You looked like your hair had been gnawed off by an angry beaver.”

“I was seven! And anyways it all grew back. This, this is permanent.”

“That’s kinda the point.”

“Also, your ma would never forgive you.”

The smaller one scowled at that. "Yeah, well, she's not here, is she?"

She watched the easy way they argued, like brothers, though they didn't look much alike. Maybe best friends, maybe something more. She was reminded of her second cousin Charlie, who's been known to frequent the kind of bars in the Village that got raided on the regular.

"There, that's the place," said the smaller one, nodding at Mickey’s, and Essie melted back into the alley, out of sight. She was around the corner, flicking her smoke onto the asphalt and entering the back of the shop just as Mickey hollered that she had a customer.

She pushed open the curtain and entered the front of the barbershop, took in the two skinny boys. The taller one got a look at the tattoos visible beneath her yellow cotton dress and whistled low. The other one smacked him in the chest with his tweed cap and hissed out a warning to stifle it.

"Hi boys," she said, quirking her orange-red lips into a smirk. "What'll it be?"

A prayer for the dead, as it turned out. ‘Steve, Ma'am,’ solemnly held out a napkin with a sketch on it. It was a St. Paddy’s cross, and she'd done plenty of those, set against an intricate Celtic knot.

“Now that’s real nice,” she told Steve. “You draw it yourself?”

“Yes'm.”

“What else can you draw? I can always pay for nice flash,” she said, and the taller one (“Bucky, ma'am,”) snorted.

“Yeah Steve, what else can you draw?”

“Can it, Bucky.”

She raised a curious eyebrow and Steve’s cheeks turned pink, but he didn’t volunteer anything, just nervously twisted his cap in his hands.

He hesitated when she told him to take off his shirts, eyes darting to his friend. He didn’t seem the nervous type, his voice had been laced with steel when the boys were still outside, and she guessed he was a bit shy about taking off his shirt in front of a lady.

“You sober, kid?” she asked, though she knew he was. He nodded.

“And you’re sure you want this?”

Another nod.

Essie whistled between her teeth, and the small brown orphan boy who ran errands for her skidded into the shop.

She peeled a bill out of her bra and asked him to run down to the pub on the corner and bring back a bottle of bourbon.

“Not Curly’s place,” she called after him, and the child nodded, like he didn’t already know to stay away from Curly, who had been doing a lot of drunken gum flapping lately about how that madman overseas had the right idea of of things.

When he returned with the bottle, she poured the three of them each a Dixie cup full of bourbon. “Bottoms up, gents,” she said, and they drained their cups.

Steve loosened up after that, took his shirt off though he still looked embarrassed, and let her get to work. He was quiet, but Bucky talked enough for the both of them, about pictures he wanted to see, stories he'd read, the trouble in Europe. Every so often his eyes darted to Steve’s naked chest when he thought she wasn’t looking.

As he talked, Steve relaxed into the chair, and when she glanced at Bucky, he winked at her. Kid was a real heartbreaker with those baby blues and that crooked grin. She wondered idly if he realized he was in love with his best friend.

Steve was nothing but skin and bones, no cushion of fat to speak of, and she knew the needle had to hurt but he took it in stride. She'd been right, he wasn't scared of a little pain, but he'd been mortified at the idea of stripping half down in front of her, in front of his friend.

She asked again about his other drawings as she inked in the cross, and after a second slug of bourbon Steve admitted that he’s been drawing nudie pictures to sell down by the docks.

Essie threw back her head and laughed. “Well, that I can definitely pay you for,” she said. “Come on by anytime and show me what you got.”

When she was finished she wiped the tattoo with a soft cloth, affixed a bandage, and warned him not to scratch.

“It'll itch like the devil himself is sticking pins in you, but you'll mess it all up if you scratch it.”

Steve promised he wouldn’t, eased into his undershirt and button-down, and then they set off into the darkening night.

Essie watched them leave, Bucky squeezing Steve’s arm gently before sliding his hand into his pocket, and then went back inside to tidy up her tools.

“Someday he’ll come, the man I love,” she sang under her breath as she swept the floor.

They would return once, Steve looking furtive, Bucky amused, and Steve would show her his nudie sketches.

"Oh, honey, these are lovely," Essie said. She gave him what little extra cash she had on hand and told him she could take more if he had it. She followed them out of the store, lighting up a smoke and watching as they walked down the block, turned the corner and slipped right on out of her life as easily as they'd slipped in.

 

She'd think about those boys once or twice in the coming weeks, the grieving son and his best friend, neither of them realizing they were in love with each other. Then they had faded from her mind, until a few years later, when she was sitting in a matinee watching a news short of someone they were calling Captain America, someone who looked vaguely familiar. Essie had always had a head for remembering faces, and she watched the short with a puzzled look on her face, trying to remember where she’d seen the man. She wouldn’t have thought she’d be capable of forgetting a set of shoulders like that.

It wasn’t till they cut to his buddy that she realized Captain America was the scrawny kid who’d wanted a tattoo to remember his ma.

 _Sweet Jesus,_ she thought with a grin, settling back into her seat. _Just think, I've got Captain America's girlie flash hanging on my wall. What a world._

 

**1944**

In his tent, Bucky startled from a light sleep, went from lying down on his back to crouched and ready, rifle slung over his shoulder, in about half a second.

He’d been such a deep sleeper before the war. Now he woke up two or three times a night with his heart hammering in his chest, hearing the rumble of otherworldly tanks and smelling the ghostly scent of ozone and ash, of vaporized bodies.

He realized belatedly that it was Dugan’s triumphant cheer that had awoken him. Not mortar shells or gunshots from an ambush. Not that creepy doctor who kept injecting weird blue shit into his veins back at the Axis weapons factory. Just Dugan howling with laughter, and Steve yelling at Dugan to give it back.

Bucky rubbed a hand over his face, ran his fingers through his crazy hair, and shoved his way through the tent flaps.

“What’s going on?” he asked, kneeling down next to Jones, who was poking at his ham and eggs with a mess fork.

“With Dum-Dum? No telling,” Jones said.

“Dugan!” Steve yelled, flying out of his officer’s tent and tackling Dugan to the ground.

Dugan just laughed, made a quick fold in the paper, and sent it spiraling to Bucky.

Bucky unfolded the paper, raised his eyebrows, and grinned. It was a cartoon of a baying wolf holding a knife in one hand and a glass of ale in the other. There was a small American flag tattooed on the wolf’s left bicep, and the banners above and below the wolf said Howling Commandos.

“Sorry, Cap,” Bucky said with a grin. “Dugan’s right, this is gold.”

Jones sighed and held out a hand, and Bucky handed over the scrap of paper.

Jones raised his eyes to meet Steve’s. “All that time you spend scratching up paper in your tent, I thought you were drawing up plans and sketching maps,” he said evenly.

“I was! I am! Um, most of the time.”

“Hmm hmm,” Jones said, refolding the paper into a plane and throwing it over the fire to Carter, who'd just emerged looking like she’d stayed the night in a five-star hotel instead of a mildewed canvas tent.

No wonder Steve loved her, Bucky thought for the hundredth time.

Carter unfolded the paper, blinked once, and then smiled broadly. "Steve, it's marvelous," she said, and Steve flushed. "Monty, you have to see this," she called as Falsworth emerged from the trees that ringed the camp clearing.

They ate their breakfast and broke down the camp quickly, still two days out from the weapons base they were targeting, and by the time they made it back to base five days later Bucky had forgotten all about the drawing.

Dugan hadn't though, and as soon as Phillips finished briefing them and granted them a three day leave, Dugan hustled them onto a train and down to Soho to find a tattoo shop.

They piled into the shop only slightly drunk on ale, and Dugan produced the sketch he'd stolen from Steve, whose hands were shoved sheepishly in the pockets of his khaki pants.

The artist looked at the sketch through his coke-bottle thick glasses and agreed that he could do it. “Right nice,” he said. “You made this?”

Dugan shook his head and hooked a thumb at Steve. “He did.”

“Cap here used to sell flash,” Bucky couldn't resist adding. Steve shot him a look and Bucky grinned, not even a little sorry, as he thought about them walking across the bridge and down to Bowery Street so Steve could have the lady tattooist work on his back.

Christ, he'd been lit that night on paper cups of whiskey, sneaking looks at Steve’s naked chest as he traded stories with the lady. Ellie, he thought her name was, or maybe Ettie. So lit that he'd wanted to grab Steve by one skinny wrist and pull him into a dark alley as they left the shop. Wanted to kiss Steve stupid, and tell him that Bucky couldn't for the life of him figure out why none of the gals he set Steve up with were much interested in seeing Steve a second time.

He hadn't, of course; even if Steve had wanted to kiss him back, Bucky wouldn't risk it. That was the kind of thing two guys could maybe get away with a couple of blocks east of their coldwater flat, but Bucky wasn't as familiar with the neighborhoods across the bridge, and didn't want to chance it. And anyways, the way Steve looked when he caught Bucky kissing a girl, the naked want on his face...well, Steve wouldn't want to do those things with a guy like Bucky.

Steve had just needed to find the right girl was all. And now he had.

Steve conferred with the artist about the colors he’d imagined while he was sketching with only a stub of charcoal, and about slight adjustments to the tattoos. Dernier had wanted a French flag for the wolf’s tattoo of course, and Falsworth a Union Jack. Jones wanted his wife’s initials, Dugan a lucky clover.

Steve had decided to go with a small red rose. Bucky thought of Carter, an English rose if ever there was one, and twisted his lips into an imitation of a smile at Steve’s choice.

In the end, only Bucky and Morita stuck with the Stars and Stripes on the miniature tattoo. Bucky figured Morita had his own reasons--he'd caught plenty of flack from other G.I.s even when they'd all been slogging through the same muddy fields. And Bucky, well, Bucky thought about how Steve looked in that crazy get-up he'd been wearing when he busted Bucky out of the laboratory where Bucky had been sure he would die, muttering his name and rank and serial number while delirious with pain. He thought of how tall and patriotic and _alive_ Steve seemed, while Bucky was just a shadow of the cocky kid he’d once been.

He thought of all of this, but all he said was “Nah, I'll stick with the original,” and the tattooist had simply nodded and made a note in his book.

“Can't believe Cap’s actually getting a tattoo,” Dugan said gleefully, until Steve actually pulled his shirt over his head and they all got a look at the cross on Steve’s back.

It was massive, easily five times as large as the one he'd got back in New York. At Bucky’s questioning look, Steve shrugged and said, “The first one didn't survive Erskine’s, ah, process. I got it fixed at a bunch of stops when I was touring.”

“Yeah, of course,” Bucky said faintly, smiling, but he felt like he'd been hollowed out, like their night at Essie's--it was definitely Essie, Bucky remembered now--had been erased by Steve’s transformation.

Like everything about his life with Steve before the war had been a mirage.

He didn't think he could stand there for an hour looking at Steve half naked without going crazy, and he told the others he'd be waiting for his turn at the pub next door.

He drank what felt like his body weight in watered-down ale, but nothing took off the edge. Dugan showed up after a while, and Dernier, and they ordered a round of shots, and still Bucky felt everything, every emotion and memory, that he didn’t want to feel. When Falsworth joined them, he figured it was his turn soon, and headed back to the tattoo parlor.

The needle didn’t hurt like he expected, the scraping sensation in his arm actually kind of pleasant. It took his mind off of the war at least, as few things could do these days.

A couple of days later they were packing up their gear to head out into the field again, Dugan bitching loudly about how much his arm itched.

“Dugan, if you mess up my artwork I’ll have you court martialed,” Steve said mildly.

Dugan pushed up his sleeve to get a look at it, and then they were all comparing their new ink, Jones relieved to see that his skin hadn’t raised any scars yet. Steve pushed his sleeve up as well, and Dernier whistled. Steve’s arm looked like it was healing three times as fast as everybody else’s, the skin already flaking off in places.

Bucky retreated to the latrine to check out his own tattoo in private, and saw that it was almost as healed as Steve’s. He spent the next month wearing long sleeves even when they were on a sweaty five day march to get to their next target, and worrying about what exactly that doctor had done to him.

 

Years later, he would sit motionless in an uncomfortable chair while a faceless, white-coated engineer painted a red star on his metal arm.

“See, we even gave you a new tattoo, for Mother Russia,” the man would say, but the Soldier would only stare at him blankly, uncomprehending, and wait for his next set of orders.

 

**2015**

Steve was one hell of a fighter, but he wasn’t exactly what you’d call stealthy.

Hell, Sam had seen that the first day they’d met. Steve was such a smug bastard with his ‘on your left’ nonsense. In the first week he’d known Steve the guy had detonated a defunct army base, shut down eight lanes of traffic on the beltway, and dropped 10,000 tons of flaming steel into the Potomac while leveling the Triskelion.

Sure, most of that had been done by the assholes trying to kill Steve, but still. Stealthy, not so much.

So the first time Steve had told Sam that he wanted to go for a walk alone to clear his head, Sam had taken him at face value. They'd been following a promising lead in Amsterdam that hadn't panned out, and Steve’s disappointment was palpable.

But every two or three days he'd say the same thing and disappear for a couple of hours, and Sam's curiosity was getting the better of him.

Now the weeks of searching for Bucky had stretched into months, every lead a dead end with no sign of Cap’s old buddy, and Sam could see the strain taking hold. Steve was still quick with a joke, but his smile never quite lit up his face anymore.

So maybe Steve really was walking around foreign cities to clear his head, or maybe something else was going on.

Sam was sitting in a shabby hotel room in Prague, debating following Steve to see what kind of trouble he might be getting up to, when his phone rang.

“Hey, Natasha, what’s up?”

“Nothing urgent, but we could use Steve’s input on a minor situation,” she said.

‘Nothing urgent’ was their code for ‘Steve needs to come home and recharge before he goes off the deep end,’ and Sam was relieved to hear she’d found some reason to temporarily halt his search.

“Yeah, okay, sounds good,” Sam said. “He’s taking a walk right now, but I’ll let him know.”

“Sure, he's ‘taking a walk.’”

“Well, that’s what he said anyway, and I’m not his damned keeper,” Sam groused, even though that wasn’t exactly true. Half the time he wasn’t even sure he wanted Cap to find Bucky, not if he was anything like the murderous cyborg who’d booted Sam off an airborne helicarrier. But if they did end up finding the Winter Soldier and not Steve’s oldest friend, well, Sam would have his back.

“I'm starting to think he really is cage fighting,” Sam thought aloud, and Natasha laughed.

“You really think Steve Rogers would use his super strength to beat up some poor gym rat who just needs extra cash?” Natasha asked.

“Well, what do you think he's doing?”

“I already know what he's doing,” she said smugly, and Sam barked out a laugh. Like hell she did; Natasha loved for people to think she knew more than she did. He was _so_ on to her.

“Anyway, Tony’s organizing some kind of shindig for Saturday night and everyone’s going to be there, so see if you can get him to take some R&R.”

“Everyone?”

“Everyone. Including a certain Norse god and your very favorite colonel.”

Sam laughed. “Thanks, Natasha. I'll see what I can do.”

He hung up, thought about it for all of two seconds, and then set off into the night to find Steve.

“This...is not cage fighting,” he said an hour later as he pushed his way into a well-lit tattoo parlor on Bělehradská.

Steve looked over his shoulder and smiled. "Hey, Sam.”

“Hey,” Sam said, stepping closer to take a look at the ink on Steve’s back. There was some kind of old fashioned looking cross over his left shoulder blade that had faded with time, and down the right side of his back was a long list of numbers, the ink still freshly black. The artist, a pretty, round-faced woman with coal black hair and large gauges in her ears, was just finishing up the last letter on the last line.

Sam read the numbers, realized what he was looking at, and took a step back, suddenly aware that he was invading Steve’s privacy.

“I had no idea you were so into tattoos,” Sam said. “Does Fox News know about this?”

Steve laughed. “I got my third one when I was in the European Theater, so let's see them try and come at me.”

Steve seemed to be in a fine enough mood, not at all irritated that Sam was intruding, so he pulled up a stool that the black-haired woman was nodding at.

“You ever get any in your Air force days?” Steve asked as the woman touched up some of the numbers.

“Nah. Well, almost, but the guy working near Basic that everyone went to, I didn't trust him not to scar me up. I'd seen some of his work already, and I got enough keloids without paying for the pleasure.”

Steve looked guilty at that. “Yeah, I didn't know that was a thing. I guess Gabe was worried about that too, but his turned out okay.”

The tattoo artist pushed back her stool and started speaking in rapid-fire Czech.

Sam looked at Steve and said, “Don't ask me. I know just enough Dari to ask for directions and yell ‘Stay back!’”

“This man was an idiot,” she said in English. “All skin can take ink. I do you now?”

Sam laughed. “I'm good, but thanks for the offer. If I come across a brother needing a tattoo I'll send him your way.”

After Steve had paid and pocketed her business card, they end up eating fish and chips at an Irish pub near the tattoo parlor. After one Guinness, Sam said, “Sorry for barging in on you. Natasha called, said they want your input on something.”

Steve snorted. “You think I don't know what that means? I might be 97 but I'm not an idiot.”

Sam changed tactics then. “She said everyone would be there, and, well…”

“And, well, you want to meet Rhodey.”

“I so want to meet that man!”

“You know he's Tony’s best friend, right?”

Sam waved a hand dismissively. “Everybody has their blind spots. I'm here with you, aren't I? Hard telling some days who's crazier between Iron Man and Captain America.”

Steve tipped his stein at Sam in agreement.

It wasn’t until they were walking the long way back to their hotel, along the river, that Steve opened up about his tattoos.

“So, the coordinates,” he began awkwardly, and Sam nodded. He'd seen enough to know that the long list of numbers and letters running down Steve’s back stood for the geographical coordinates of every place they’d been while searching for Bucky.

“I just,” Steve said, and stopped walking, leaning heavily against the railing of the bridge. “I just, if we find him, I need him to know that I looked for him. That this time, I looked.”

And Sam, well, he wasn't Steve’s goddamn counselor but he was Steve’s friend, and he knew when somebody needed a hug.

 

A year later Sam would be be grimly tightening a clamp around Bucky’s arm while he was passed out, and he’d think about the coordinates running down Steve’s back. They had both been there, in Bucharest, combing the city for Bucky, and they'd never seen any sign of him.

Grudgingly, Sam would admit to himself that Bucky had some serious stealth.

 

**2017**

Steve collapsed back onto the bed, flushed and sweaty. Next to him, Bucky’s breathing slowly evened out as he came down from his own high.

“So, that's new,” Steve said once his brain was working again, folding one arm over his eyes, and Bucky laughed quietly.

Steve groped blindly for the box of tissues on their bedside table, and dropped it onto Bucky’s bare chest. Bucky cleaned up Steve’s belly and his own before throwing the wad of tissues towards the wastebasket in the corner.

“That was….” Steve started to say ‘nice,’ but his tongue suddenly seemed too large for his mouth. _That was perfect,_ he wanted to say. _I love you,_ he wanted to say, but the words wouldn't come.

Bucky didn't seem to have any words either though. He curled around Steve’s chest, mumbled “Mnnn,” a couple of times, and then he was out.

Steve ran his fingers gently through Bucky's hair as he reflected on how they'd arrived at this point.

Lovers.

It seemed too good to be true.

He thought about that word, what it meant to him. He had loved Peggy, had dreamed of introducing her to his Ma, even though she was long in her unmarked grave beside Steve’s father before he'd ever met Peg.

He had loved Bucky back then too, and he thought Peg would maybe have understood how Steve was, how he could love two different people with all his heart. Steve had been alone for so long; after his mother died, after Bucky went off to Basic, after Bucky died, after SHIELD had turned out to be just another cancerous disappointment.

He thought about how they had arrived at this point as he watched the reflected eddies of the pool outside their bedroom dance on the ceiling.

It had started with a call from the king himself.

“Your friend is awake,” T’Challa said crisply into the phone, and Steve felt almost dizzy with relief, sending off a quick, reflexive prayer of thanks to St. Leonard. The joy of finding Bucky again had long been mitigated by the length of time Bucky had spent in his self-imposed stasis.

“I'll be on the next flight out,” Steve said. “Thanks. Thank you for keeping him safe.”

Bucky looked just as he had over a year ago, unchanged, while Steve felt more that more lines had appeared on his face with every month that passed.

But Bucky was alive, and he was mostly well. Steve would have been selfish to ask for anything more.

“You said you remembered everything,” Steve said one night while they were slumped shoulder to shoulder, eating mango-lime sorbet and watching a Wakandan soap opera.

“Yeah, I said that,” Bucky agreed, and Steve couldn’t bring himself to press for details.

But later, Bucky would admit that he had been telling only half-truths; he remembered most of his missions and kills in vivid technicolor detail, but everything else was patchy and blurred.

“Did we ever?” Bucky asked a few weeks back as Steve was stirring the sweet potato stew he’d made for their supper.

“Did we ever…?” Steve had repeated, distracted with adding minced ginger to the stew as precisely as the Palace chef had instructed.

“Did we ever, y’know, kiss?”

Bucky sounded nervous, and Steve had dumped the ginger into the pot without stirring so he could turn to face Bucky.

“We, no, we never. Why, what do you remember?”

Seventy years, a lifetime ago, Steve knew Bucky might have demurred answering that question, but not now, not anymore. He watched as Bucky sliced up a loaf of crusty bread, keeping it in place with his hip as he worked the knife deftly with his one hand, and said, “I have this, this really vivid memory of dragging you into an alley and kissing you stupid.”

“Yeah?” Steve said, his voice faint in his own ears as he dropped the wooden spoon he'd been using. “Where, um, where were we?”

Bucky stopped slicing the bread, squinting up at the ceiling fan. Somewhere outside of their open window, insects were calling to one another in the night.

“Maybe the East Village? Definitely Manhattan,” Bucky said, and then he began to sing, “He’ll be big and strong, the man I love.” It was off-pitch but still beautiful, and Steve was transported back to New York in the ’30s, when he’d been a deep raw wound after losing his ma, watching as his oldest friend checked in at the recruiter’s office, went on dates, and prepared to leave Steve for good.

He could close his eyes and smell the stench of the garbage in the streets, the exhaust from the motor cars, the sharp aroma of the disinfectant used to clean the tattoo needles. He could hear horns honking, and music playing from open windows, and sailors singing drunkenly as they ambled from bar to bar.

“Jesus Christ, Bucky,” he said at the influx of memories. “That was the night I got my first tattoo, the one for Ma.”

“Yeah?” Bucky asked. “Yeah, guess it was. But we didn't …?” His eyes were soft and a little worried, and Steve, well, Steve had never meant to say these things to Bucky, but he couldn’t let Bucky think he was mis-remembering things. HYDRA had messed with Bucky’s head enough.

“We never did,” Steve admitted. “But I, but I wanted to. I would've followed you into that dirty alley. I would've kissed you back.”

“Huh,” was all Bucky said, and then resumed cutting the bread into thick slices. “Guess I wanted it so bad I just imagined that we did.”

That was all they said about it on that night, but they touched more after that, Steve’s hand falling on Bucky’s elbow, Bucky squeezing his shoulder.

Tony thawed with time, enough to call Steve in whenever shit was going seriously sideways. Bucky always stayed behind, his status as a fugitive still uncertain.

Bucky’s jaw would tighten whenever Steve was called away, but he never tried to stop him from going. Usually Steve would return in a few days, and lay out the mission in the broadest strokes, emphasizing that everybody was fine, the threat neutralized.

Bucky would be especially handsy on his return, checking Steve for injuries. There was a heat in Bucky’s expression that Steve desperately wanted to act on, but he had decided to let Bucky take the lead. Bucky had been manipulated enough, and Steve needed Bucky to know he held the reins.

While Steve half-expected that Bucky would lose control after one of Steve’s missions, would start kissing him and ask for more, the actual moment that they tipped from friends to lovers was far more understated.

Steve dozed on the sofa, feet in Bucky’s lap, until Bucky turned off the television and said, “Bedtime, Steve.”

Steve grumbled but he got up, stretched, and made his way to the bathroom to brush his teeth. When he opened his bedroom door, Bucky was sitting up on Steve’s bed, shirt off, smiling uncertainly.

He had never looked more beautiful and Steve crossed the room in two steps, knelt between Bucky’s legs, and cupped Bucky’s face in his hands.

“Can I?” he asked, and Bucky nodded, and then they kissed and kissed some more, until they fell back onto the bed.

Afterward, they both dozed, waking in the dark of night to fumble their way to the kitchen and make a midnight snack. Once they'd finished eating slices of homemade bread sprinkled with darkly marbled bleu cheese and drizzled with honey, Bucky had tugged him back into the bedroom.

“Was distracted earlier,” Bucky muttered, “but now I gotta see what you've done to yourself.”

Steve stripped down and laid back on the bed, only slightly self-conscious, as Bucky mapped his many tattoos with both fingers and tongue.

“This one,” Bucky said, tracing fingers along the Howlies tattoo. “I had one of these once?”

“You did,” Steve agreed, running his fingers absently along his faded wolf tattoo and feeling a shard of pain slice through him when he realized Bucky’s own tattoo had been lost with his arm. “We all did.”

“And it was Dugan’s fault,” Bucky said, grinning like he suddenly remembered.

“Everything is Dugan’s fault,” they said together, and Steve felt all the tension leave his body as they parroted the words they'd spoken so many times during the war.

“Some of this I know,” Bucky said as his fingers danced over the modified cross on his back. “And some I don't.”

“Tell me what you remember,” Steve said.

“This one's for my ma,” Bucky said with certainty, tracing a stylized shadow on Steve’s right arm. “God, she loved that show.”

Steve smiled at the memory of Bucky’s mom silencing Steve and all the Barnes kids on Sunday nights so she could listen to the radio.

“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men,” Bucky said, repeating The Shadow's intro, and Steve’s smile faded.

“And this is Rebecca,” Bucky said, running careful fingers over the image of a stuffed rabbit. “She dragged that stupid bunny everywhere.”

“She did,” Steve agreed.

“Christ, Steve, how am I supposed to fuck you with my whole family watching?” Bucky asked, and Steve laughed.

“Sorry, Buck. I never thought that was ever gonna happen, so...” Steve shrugged. “I just, the first dozen, yeah, those were for me, I loved the feel of the needle. It’s pretty addictive. But after I knew you were still alive…”

“You got tattoos to help me remember,” Bucky finished.

“Yeah. I guess I hoped it would help?”

“Well, if you wanted to make sure I never got another boner, mission accomplished,” Bucky said, but he was smiling.

“They aren't _all_ about you,” Steve said, waspish, and Bucky stopped laughing.

“No,” Bucky agreed. “They're not. This one is you, right?” He traced an hourglass on Steve’s hip, tipped on its side, the sand that should be counting down time static and unmoving.

“Yeah, Buck, that's me. First one I got after they thawed me.”

“And this one...” Bucky began kissing the long line of railroad tracks that snaked up Steve’s right leg from his ankle to his thigh, a möbius that twisted in an eternal loop. “This is me and you?”

Steve’s breaths grew shallow and his hips ground down into the bed covers, ready for another round if Bucky was. He rolled over on the bed, drawing Bucky down for another kiss.

“Yeah, Buck,” he said, breathing softly against Bucky’s lips. “Yeah, that's me and you.”

 

A year later they would both be back in the field, another alien trying to take down the universe and all hands on deck, but Steve would catch Bucky's eye across the crowded ship, and they would nod at each other, and Steve would think, _Yeah, Buck. Me and you._


End file.
